research paper on private property and democracy in russia. Needs to be 5 pages.
Need an research paper on private property and democracy in russia. Needs to be 5 pages. Please no plagiarism. With the power to appoint mayors and regional governors, in addition to stifling opposition politicians, it is difficult to argue that the Russian leader has not significantly consolidated power around his presidency. Putin has predictably not reacted well to criticisms from the West on the question of democracy in Russia. In a well-publicized response to President Bush’s expressed concerns on the subject during a 2006 press conference in St. Petersburg, Putin quipped: “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly” (“Putin rejects”).
Despite the aforementioned centralization of power under the office of the president, at least the trappings of democracy remain in Russia, with the attainment of office through direct elections. To distinguish their system of government from those of the West, Russian officials first used the phrase “managed democracy,” later changed to “sovereign democracy.” The latter term, in particular, seems to connote a firm rejection of negative assessments coming from outside of the country, and a refusal to adhere to standards adopted by the West (Plattner 142).
The reported Russian moves towards authoritarianism provide an interesting comparison to the political theories espoused by two of the West’s most revered philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes (1588 – 1679) in his famous 1651 work “Leviathan,” posited that citizens should accede to a “social contract” in which they submitted their individual rights, including those involving property, to governmental authority in exchange for personal protection as well as for the prevention of civil strife (“Hobbes’s Philosophy”). This theory dovetails to a great degree with Putin’s assumption of greater power, specifically utilized to get the Russian state back on its feet after the disastrous attempt at market liberalization under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin. . .
